Stand development involves changes in stand structure over time. Knowledge of stand development patterns is crucial for effective forest management, especially of southern bottomland hardwood forests. These forests contain more than 70 tree species, many of which have commercial timber and wildlife habitat value. I n this paper, current techniques i n stand development research are reviewed. Em...

Semivariograms were used to exploit the spatial information inherent in digital imagery of a variety of Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirbel) Franco] forest stands in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Calculations involved digital numbers from single transects of pixels representative of each stand and from a full spatial matrix of pixels from each stand. Digitized aerial...

INTRODUCTION Silviculture for the production of high-quality timber in southern bottomland hardwood forests involves the application of environmentally sound practices in order to enhance the growth and quality of both individual trees and stands. To accomplish this purpose, silvicultural practices are typically used to regulate stand density, species composition, and stem quality to promote th...

A literature review of new publications in the field of 3D data for forest applications shows that the application of airborne laser scanner data (ALS) is in the focus of research today due to its great potential for practical applications. While there is a lot of research carried out to derive forest management parameters based on laser metrics deduced from a single tree assessment or a statis...

BACKGROUND Severe canopy-removing disturbances are native to many temperate forests and radically alter stand structure, but biotic legacies (surviving elements or patterns) can lend continuity to ecosystem function after such events. Poorly understood is the degree to which the structural complexity of an old-growth forest carries over to the next stand. We asked how pre-disturbance spatial pa...

[This corrects the article on p. 65 in vol. 52, PMID: 28149394.].

Effective management and restoration of ponderosa pine forests requires an understanding of the heterogeneity of contemporary and historical stand structures. We assessed spatial and temporal patterns of tree establishment, mortality and size structure over a 30-year period in an old-growth ponderosa pine stand in the mid-montane zone of the Colorado Front Range. We analyzed spatial patterns an...

BACKGROUND A better understanding of the relationship between stand structure and productivity is required for the development of: a) scalable models that can accurately predict growth and yield dynamics for the world's forests; and b) stand management regimes that maximize wood and/or timber yield, while maintaining structural and species diversity. METHODS We develop a cohort-based canopy c...